The Jewish Tragedy
The Jewish Problem in the Modern World. By J. W. Parkes. (Home University Library. 2S. 6d.) Au. these books command the respect due to honest and serious work. Mr. Lowenthal, an American Jewish author of repute, is a little too anxious to show that he can write, but in spite of too many digressions and occasional lapses into a rather exasperating sprightliness, his history of the Jews in Germany will provide the conscientious student with an impressive—if slightly indigestible—mass of information. Mr. Bienenfeld's work (translated, and well translated, from the German) is not a history of the Jews in Germany, but an attempt to estimate objectively—or with as much objectivity as the nature of the case permits—the real motives and significance of the war which is being waged by Nazi Germany, not only on its own Jewish inhabitants, but on Jews everywhere. The conventional treatment of the subject is to examine the Nazi charges against the Jews on the plane of rational discussion, and on the footing that, while cruelty is reprehensible and unwanted refugees are a problem, the rest of the world is not otherwise directly concerned. Mr. Bienenfeld takes the view that Nazi anti-Semitism cannot be adequately discussed in the simple terms of a conflict between Germans and German Jews. It must be looked at—he insists—in the light of the mystical Nazi Weltan- schauung as a whole, and so regarded it will be seen to be an expression and a symbol of a destructive mania of which the German Jews were merely the first, because the easiest, victims.
It is one of the few weaknesses of Dr. Parkes' admirable survey of the Jewish problem in the modern world that this aspect of the Nazi war on the Jews is not brought out. The Nazi Weltanschauung is mentioned in relation to the Jews, but not explained in its bearing upon the Nazi attitude towards the whole non-German world. "National Socialism," says Dr. Parkes, "has personified in the Jews everything which was decadent or anti-social in modem civilisation," as though it were only the personification that is unwarranted, and not the Nazi claim to be fighting "everything decadent and anti- social "—a claim which Dr. Parkes can hardly be supposed to endorse.
If one other criticism may be offered of a masterly performance, it is that Dr. Parkes does not, perhaps, give the American Jews quite as important a place as they deserve. The future of the American Jews either in American or in Jewish life is a matter of speculation, but this immense aggregation of Jews—there are well over four million—in a New World democracy is a fact of the highest significance, in view of the precarious position of the Jews in Europe, and especially in Eastern and Central Europe, which were until recently the main repositories of the Jewish tradition.
But as a whole Dr. Parkes' survey is signally successful in its objective, concise and comprehensive treatment of a subject which is full of pitfalls. It is a difficult subject because of its range and complexity, and a delicate one because a course has to be so carefully steered between the insensitive frank- ness which will save the writer trouble and the disingenuous reticence which will spare some readers pain. That the book will be distressing reading for Jews—and perhaps for some others—goes without saying. Most distressing of all is not the record of past humiliations, but the bleak uncertainty of the Jewish future. Gently and sympathetically, but unmis- takably, Dr. Parkes makes it clear that in his view there is hardly a country in Europe where the Jews can consider themselves secure. He also makes it clear that in his view "the Jews cannot alter their own destiny." Their future- and this means the future, not only of the Jews as a group, but of Jews now living, and their children, as individual human beings—depends upon events wholly outside their control.
If the world should one day grow more prosperous and, through prosperity, more tolerant, the Jews will have a chance ; if not, then it will be seen that "the last act of the tragedy is not yet upon the stage." Such is Dr. Parkes' sombre conclusion, and no realist will deny that he may well be right. Even in Palestine, where it looked as though tilt' Jews might be allowed to do something for themselves, they have suffered the frustration of the MacDonald White Paper. For the individual Jew what is most discouraging of all is the axiom, implicit both in Dr. Parkes' narrative and his forecast, that if the verdict, however obtained, goes against the Jews as a group, no striving of his own after tight living or good citizenship will avail him. Why is it to be taken for granted that Jews are not to be judged on their personal merits? Why is it to be regarded as a matter of course that every Jew can be called upon, on pain of being under a cloud If he fails, to justify the doings of other Jews over whosc
conduct, good or bad, he has as much control as he has over the man in the moon? Why is it to be assumed to be part of the appointed order of things that individual human beings as such have no rights, so that Jews can be tossed about the world like so many packages of unwanted merchandise? These questions are, of course, naïve to the point of childish- ness. The facts must be faced as they are, and it would be impossible to find them more fairly summarised than in Dr. Parkes' sympathetic and skilful survey.
LEONARD STEIN.
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